"Forget the Osbournes or the Addams Family - the Sobig family of
computer worms, accounting for more than half of all virus reports,
is most likely to strike fear into the hearts of IT
administrators," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant
for Sophos Anti-Virus. "The Sobig worms, and some of the other top
ten viruses, don't just spread by email. They use a variety of
means. This underlines the importance of keeping anti-virus
protection up to date at all entry points to the company
network."

Sophos detected 625 new viruses, worms and Trojan horses in
July. The total number it now protects against is 83,499.

The top ten hoaxes reported to Sophos during July 2003 are as
follows:

"An old chain letter promising that Bill Gates will share his
personal fortune with anyone who forwards the email onto friends
and family has stormed to the top of the chart in July," said
Cluley. "Chain letters and hoaxes waste valuable email bandwidth
and can scare people into panicking about non-existent virus
threats."

Sophos has made available a free, constantly updated information feed for intranets and
websites which means users can always find out about the latest
viruses and hoaxes.

About Sophos

More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos’ complete security solutions as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Simple to deploy, manage, and use, Sophos’ award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, mobile and network security solutions are backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. Sophos is headquartered in Oxford, U.K., and is publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol “SOPH.” More information is available at www.sophos.com/company.